by Annette Hess
Eva glanced at the blond man, who gave her a terse nod. She turned to Nadia Wasserstrom.
“Was it his brother?”
“That, I don’t remember.”
“I present you with the following, ma’am!” David insisted, holding up a document. “You stated as much on January tenth, two years ago, at your first interview with the prosecution’s investigator!”
Eva spoke softly to Nadia, who shook her head.
“She must remember!” David exploded. “Ask her again!”
“David, sit down!” the blond man hissed.
The chief judge spoke into his microphone at the same time. “I do not consider the question material to the witness’s testimony.”
The blond man grasped David by the shoulder and pushed him back into his seat. David sat down reluctantly and ran his hands through his hair, then stood up and charged across the auditorium, through the seated spectators, up the steps to the double doors, and out of the room. Eva noticed that even the defendant was watching David’s departure. Then he said something to his attorney, who rose: his client wished to make a statement. The chief judge turned toward the ferret face and made a gesture. Granted.
The defendant stood and stated, in a soft voice, “I was not even at my office that day. We were celebrating our commandant’s birthday. He had invited approximately twenty officers on a boat tour of the Soła, followed by lunch in the officers’ mess. You may ask my wife, right over there. She joined me that day too. Or the adjutant here. He was there that day with his wife as well.”
The chief judge turned to his associate judges. They conferred briefly. The defendant’s wife was then called forward. She introduced herself and began to describe the day in question, slowly and exhaustively. Eva and Nadia Wasserstrom had moved to sit on the prosecutors’ side. She translated quietly for the witness, who listened carefully and never took her eyes off the defendant’s wife. The faded beauty remembered many details, but mainly recalled the shared lunch in the officers’ mess. They’d had roast pork. With mashed potatoes and cucumber salad. Finally, the wife opened her purse and pulled something out.
“This photograph was taken over dessert. Would you like to see it?”
Nadia, meanwhile, said to Eva, “Then it happened on a different day. A different date. But it happened. Just on a different day.”
But Eva didn’t hear her, although the witness was speaking directly into her ear. Eva looked at the photograph in the wife’s hand. She was certain her father was pictured there. Laughing among the sated officers and their wives. But Eva didn’t care.
WHEN ANNEGRET LEFT City Hospital that afternoon and hurried through the rain toward the streetcar stop, Doctor Küssner was waiting for her. As on their first evening together, he’d been leaning against his dark vehicle, then stepped into her way as she passed. His coat was soaked—he’d clearly been waiting for some time. She had been avoiding him in the ward for the past few days. He now grabbed her arm and steered her toward his car so forcefully it would have attracted attention had Annegret attempted to free herself from his grip. He put her in the passenger seat, slammed the door shut, and sat down behind the wheel. Annegret feigned scorn and asked if he was following through with his plans to abduct her. Doctor Küssner ignored the question and informed her that he had moved out of his house. “How is that any of my concern?” Annegret snarled. He retorted that it was high time she shook the unhealthy attitude that nothing ever concerned her. Outside the car, Nurse Heide walked past in her shapeless raincoat and heard loud voices. She glanced through the windows, which were beginning to fog up, and recognized the two quarreling. She considered her long-held suspicions confirmed and happily made her way home. Human depravity had proven itself yet again!
Doctor Küssner had started crying in the car, awkwardly but authentically, which Annegret could barely stand.
“What the hell is this? Do you think you can pressure me like this? Or are you bawling because you regret it? I told you from the start—”
“Shut your trap!” Küssner hissed, uncharacteristically uncouth. He wiped away his tears and stared at the rain streaming down the windshield. “I’m sad because I’m hurting my wife. I’m sad because I won’t be living with my children anymore. Yet it’s still the right thing to do.” Doctor Küssner sat up, turned the key, and started the engine. He turned on the wipers, which cleared their view of the street, passersby, and other cars’ headlights. “We’re driving to Wiesbaden. I’d like to show you the house.”
Annegret reached for the door handle. “I don’t want to!”
But Doctor Küssner turned on his blinker to enter traffic. “I love you.” It was the first time anyone had ever said that to Annegret.
“You don’t know me.”
“What do knowing someone and loving them have to do with each other?” Küssner stepped on the gas, and at the same time, Annegret opened her door. She heaved herself out of the moving car. Küssner hit the brakes.
“Are you insane?!”
Annegret rolled her ankle and roared that he was a selfish pig, just like every other man, and threw the door shut. She limped away in outrage. Doctor Küssner honked twice, loudly, then sped off. He was furious too. He soon calmed down, though, and drove by himself to Wiesbaden, where he signed the lease agreement for the thriving pediatric clinic, the rental contract for the Art Nouveau mansion with its overgrown lawn, and dreamed of a shared future with Annegret.
Annegret entered the apartment above German House. Her ankle barely hurt anymore. She was tough.
“Anyone home?” There was no reply. Annegret hung her wet raincoat on a hook and headed straight for Eva’s room. She went to her desk, opened the second drawer from the top, and pulled out one of the blue notebooks inside. She lay down on Eva’s bed, fumbled in the pocket of her black stirrup pants for a fruit candy, which she popped into her mouth, and began to read: Women and children were first led into the “Showers,” followed by the men. In order to trick the victims and prevent panic from breaking out, signs were mounted, indicating the way to the “Bathroom” or “Disinfection Room.” Five to seven hundred adults and children in a given arrival group would be forced into a space barely a hundred meters square. Zyklon B was dumped into a wire mesh contraption, then released into a wire mesh column through a hatch in the roof. Screams could be heard outside the gas chambers at first, then the sound of the voices changed into a buzzing, like in a beehive, till everything went quiet. They all died within five to fifteen minutes. After airing out the gas chamber for thirty to forty minutes, the Sonderkommando, a special prisoner work unit, had to clear out the corpses. They had to collect the dead people’s jewelry, cut off their hair and extract their gold teeth, separate babies from their mothers . . . Annegret closed her eyes. She thought of little Martin Fasse. She had managed to control herself since his death. She didn’t even carry around the syringe anymore. The one filled with the brownish liquid that made the children weak, feeble, and fatigued. Annegret fell asleep, and her half-finished candy slipped out of her mouth and onto the pillow. The opened notebook fell onto her belly. This was how Eva found her when she got home. She gaped at her sleeping sister, grabbed the notebook, and shook her by the shoulder.
“What do you think you’re doing in here?!” Annegret blinked and came to, then sat up. Eva was fuming. “What were you thinking, prying through my things?!”
“I’m not prying, I’m reading.”
“Annegret, what’s the big idea? Why would you do that?”
With a wave of her hand, Annegret got out of bed, the mattress creaking, and stepped over to Eva’s wardrobe, which had a mirror on its middle door. She fixed up her white-blond hair, picking at it with her thumb and index finger. “I find it engaging.”
Eva looked at her sister in the mirror. She must have misheard. Annegret continued, “You know, it’s like at the hospital. Patients are always trying to outdo each other with their stories.”
“These aren’t stories! This happened.”
Eva was aghast.
“Everybody wants to be the one closest to death. Among our parents, those whose child is sickest are the most revered. And if the kid dies, well, they get the gold crown.”
“What the hell are you saying?!” Eva felt dizzy, as if she were in the middle of a bad dream where trusted people did atrocious things. Annegret turned and stepped up close to Eva. Her breath smelled of sticky raspberry candy.
“I mean, Eva, you’re not exactly dumb yourself. It’s just common sense that they’re all lying through their teeth. It was a labor camp—”
“Hundreds of thousands of people were systematically murdered there.” Eva looked at her sister, whom she had known her entire life.
“They were criminals, so of course they wouldn’t get kid-glove treatment,” Annegret continued, unimpressed. “But the numbers that are being thrown around, those are nonsense. I did a rough calculation, myself, once. I happen to know a little bit about chemistry, after all. Do you know how much of this Zyklon B stuff they would have needed to kill all those people? They would’ve had to receive four truckloads every day—”
Eva walked out on Annegret midsentence. Annegret followed on her heels and continued to explain that this alleged mass extermination wasn’t even logically possible. Eva went into the living room and opened the cupboard. She pulled out the manila folder and opened it. She thrust the top sheet in Annegret’s face.
“You drew this.”
Annegret fell silent and looked at the pointed roof, the slanted door and disproportionately large windows, at the two girls in braids and the smokestacks in the background. She shrugged, but Eva could clearly see little beads of sweat form on her sister’s brow and her face turn white.
“Those two,” Eva said. “That’s us. We were there, Annegret. All of those people died right next door to us. We were there, and you know it.” The sisters looked each other in the eye. Eva began to cry, then to sob. Annegret looked increasingly perturbed, as though someone had woken her from a long, comatose slumber. She took a step toward Eva, like she wanted to hug her. Then the front door opened and they heard their father come in.
“Man, oh, man, is it coming down out there. I’m ready for you, Noah!”
Annegret yanked the drawing out of Eva’s hand and began to rip it up. Ludwig and Edith appeared in the door. Ludwig was standing up straighter than usual.
“Notice anything different about me?” he asked jovially.
Edith, on the other hand, immediately sensed something was amiss. Her eyes wandered from Annegret, who was tearing the paper into smaller and smaller bits, to Eva, who was rubbing her face. Her cheeks were blotchy, and her updo had come loose. Then Stefan burst into the room.
“Daddy’s wearing a crosset!”
“It’s called a ‘corset,’ little one. And I could get used to this. I think it’s already helping!”
“Hush, Ludwig,” Edith interjected. “As for you, sweetheart, off to your room now.”
“Why?! Were you crying, Eva?”
“Yes, because of Purzel.” Eva swallowed and pulled herself together.
Edith pushed Stefan out the doorway. “Time to practice your dictation. Scoot! Otherwise no pudding later.” Stefan puffed out his cheeks and shuffled to his room. The other four didn’t move. Even Ludwig was getting worried now.
“What on earth is going on? I have to be in the kitchen in half an hour.”
There’s nothing left to lose, Eva thought, and she said, “What was it like, Daddy, to serve up full bellies and happy hearts to those murderers?”
At that, Annegret pointedly let the scraps of paper flutter to the floor and left the room.
Ludwig sat down at the dining room table. The room was silent but for a gentle knocking on the window whenever the wind blew rain against the panes. Edith crouched down on the carpet and gathered the scraps into her cupped hand. Eva looked at the painting on the wall and tried to remember the cows’ names.
“What would you like to know, Eva?” Ludwig asked.
“A VISITT TO THEE ZOOO is some-thhhingg for thee whole fam-i-lee. We lookk att thee an-i-malss andd fen-ses pro-tecctt us from the dayn-ger-ouss an-i-malss.” In Stefan’s room next door, Annegret was practicing a dictation with her brother. She stood beside him and read the practice text out loud, excessively enunciating each word. Stefan was stooped over his notebook, writing slowly and making lots of mistakes.
“Fences, sweetie. Fences with a ‘c.’ Next sentence: ‘We can see goats or horses anywhere, but where else can we see the lion’s impressive mane or the tiger’s bright fur?’ Question mark.”
“IT WAS A HAPPY TIME,” her father had said. This sentence echoed in Eva’s mind as she stood in the streetcar and held onto one of the hanging straps with her right hand. She was on her way to the public prosecutor’s office. Her parents had still been talking about their time at the camp when the phone in the front hallway rang. It was Fräulein Schenke. There was an urgent telex from Poland that needed translating. Despite the late hour, the streetcar was crowded. Eva stood hedged among the breathing bodies and didn’t feel their touch. She saw her father sitting before her at the table, his posture better than usual. Her mother, hands clasped behind her back, leaning against the cupboard. “It was a happy time,” her father had said. Because this position was the first where he was allowed to bring his wife and daughters with him. They lived together as a family for the first time, in a big house, provided for and protected. It wasn’t till some time had passed that they began to understand what was going on at the camp. The guests in the mess were officers, upstanding folks. Not all of them, of course—some drank too much. The director of the political department? The one with the ferret face? Polite and unassuming. He sometimes asked for leftovers. For the prisoners who worked in his department. No, they didn’t know what he did during office hours. No, the SS people didn’t talk about their work at lunch. Eva’s mother had said that she never even went into the camp. She tended to the household, did laundry, and cooked. She took care of her daughters. Yes, she had to close the windows. It smelled awful when the east wind was blowing. Yes, they knew that bodies were being burned there. But they didn’t learn till afterward that people were being killed in gas chambers. Not till after the war. Why didn’t he request a transfer? He tried twice. No luck. Yes, well, he did indeed join the SS, even before the war. But only because he felt alone, because he was so often separated from his family. Not because of personal conviction. Eva had asked why the main defendant spat at her mother’s feet.
“And why was his wife so hostile? What have they got against you?”
Edith had replied that they didn’t know, and Eva’s father had repeated the line. “We don’t know.”
The telephone had rung in the hallway. When Eva returned to the living room after the short call, and explained that she had to go to the office, her father had looked at her and said, as though making his final point, “We had no choice, child.”
Eva got out at the stop near the office building. She could not remember ever having been so tired in her life. It was all she could do not to sit down on a park bench, never to rise again. Eva took the elevator to the ninth floor, rang at the glass door, and Fräulein Schenke appeared on the other side to let her in.
“So, are you going to join us later at Boogie’s?” Eva shook her head, but Fräulein Schenke continued. “Lehmkuhl’s coming, Miller, and that other clerk . . . what’s his name again, the one with those unbelievably long lashes?”
“Herr Wettke,” Eva replied.
“Right.”
At that moment, the light blond-haired man appeared in the hallway, and he rushed toward Eva, his face visibly tense. He handed her a thin piece of paper, the printing slightly smeared. A telex. Eva skimmed the brief message and translated its content.
“The journey has been approved by the highest authority. Visas are being issued for all individuals requested.”
For a moment, the blond man looked as if he wanted to embrace Eva, b
ut then he gave her a quick nod and shook her hand with unaccustomed warmth.
“Thank you.”
“Was that it?”
“Yes, that was it. But it was important. It’s in regard to the on-site inspection. We’re going to Poland.”
Eva understood then. After various defendants first claimed that they couldn’t have seen or known this or that, because their office was located elsewhere, and after recurring assertions that the map of the camp was flawed, the prosecution—led by the blond man—had made a motion for a visual inspection of the camp. The defense had been against it, arguing that there were no reliable diplomatic ties between Germany and Poland, and that organizing a trip of this nature behind the Iron Curtain would be too involved. The blond man had persisted, though, and appealed to the highest levels of government in Bonn and Poland. To him, today’s telex represented the greatest success in the trial thus far. He looked happy.
“Will I be joining?” Eva asked quietly. “Or is there someone there who can translate for you?”
The blond man then gave her a look, as if just recognizing her now. “Could I have a quick word, Fräulein Bruhns?”
Eva was surprised by his familiar tone. She followed him down the corridor to his office. He offered her a chair and stood by the window, his back to the courtyard below, out of which the city’s next new high-rise was climbing into the night sky.
“Your fiancé came to see me.”
Eva sat down.
The morning after their return from the island, Jürgen had turned up at the public prosecutor’s office. David Miller had opened the door for him, and they’d given each other a once-over. Their dislike was mutual.
“Fräulein Bruhns isn’t here today,” David said.
“I know; I’d like to speak with the lead prosecutor.”
David hesitated, then made an exaggeratedly servile hand gesture. “If the gentleman would care to follow me.”